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Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates did not have a set story for the main galactic powers other than a generic campaign where a player would fight against the pirates. Players who elected to play as one of the newly added cartels could choose between a generic campaign or a special pirate story campaign, which featured a unique story, as well as missions that touched on events that happened in Empires at War.

On the review aggregator GameRankings, the game has an average score of 80% based on 13 reviews.[1]

IGN gave the game a rating of 7.8 out of 10 and said, "There are twelve new campaigns here along with 26 skirmish missions. Best of all there's a simple mission creator that lets you set up the engagements you'd like to see. Twelve multiplayer missions and three bonus missions based on the "A Piece of the Action" episode are included as well." IGN said the interface for ship to ship action is "well implemented enough" and "everything is laid out reasonably well", but "there are really far too many buttons on the interface for my tastes." IGN called the AI "robust" and said damage modeling in the game is "excellent", but said some of the ship's voice acknowledgements are bland. IGN said "Sadly, there is no z-axis in the game" and said it detracts from the realism. IGN said, "the folks at Taldren...have tried to expand the promising Dynaverse II engine" but said "the system still has many of the shortcomings that plagued Empires at War." IGN noted, "Orion Pirates isn't compatible with previous versions of Starfleet Command." IGN said, "it seems a lot like just an expansion at first glance, but it's really more of a stand-alone mission pack with a few new features added." and said "the real meat of this game is the tactical combat model."[2]

Giancarlo Varanini of GameSpot gave the game a rating of 7.9 out of 10 and said the game "has an impressive amount of content for a stand-alone expansion." Varanini wrote, "Dynaverse II is a semipersistent universe where you can travel through the universe as any one of the races in the game, engage in battles with other players, and work your way up to getting new and more powerful ships." and said the game "includes a fully functional Dynaverse II mode out of the box, and it also contains new skirmishes, a new race, gameplay improvements, and basically all of the features of the original game." Varanini said the single-player modes "are for the most part exactly the same as those in Starfleet Command Volume II, but there have been some changes made." and noted the skirmish mode with premade scenarios such as Wrath of Khan. Varanini said "the campaign mode still suffers from a poorly designed interface." Varanini also wrote, "many of the early missions can be incredibly difficult" in the campaign mode, but said the game's best feature was "a working Dynaverse II", saying it adds a great deal of replay value to the game.[3]